By Gabriel Martinez, Feb 20, 2009 in Musings
Where I teach, a liberal-arts university in the Catholic tradition, we have a pretty hard time convincing the bright and idealistic that they should study Economics. Many even doubt that economics has a place in a liberal-arts university at all. After being exposed to Homer and Shakespeare, Plato and Aquinas, Cicero and Augustine; after seeing the grand sweep of history, the intellectual thrill of natural science, and the noble call of religion, they don't seem to value the humdrum, prosaic, dirty world of inflation and unemployment, marginal costs and externalities. My students in Intermediate Macro are the career oriented. But they are also the masochistic, I have to say, because the class is very hard and it's not obviously practical. What is the place, then, of Economics in a liberal-arts university?
"A university should teach universal knowledge," says John Henry Newman in Discourse II of The Idea of a University. In context, Newman does not imply that anything that can be known ought to be taught in a university (the latest doings of the newest starlet? the number of blades of grass in a field?). He thought there is a definite ranking of what deserves to be known. What deserves to be known for its own sake—the liberal arts—has pride of place over the useful arts. Indeed, many take Newman to mean that professional preparation has no place in a true university; others point out that although Newman made space for professional education (there was a medical school in Newman's university), he was at pains to keep professionals at bay, ruled by the True, Good, and Beautiful (cf. Occasional Lecture X).
Where does this leave Economics? A look at the Oxford English Dictionary suggests that it is a practical discipline, to be practiced by householders and princes who want to be prosperous – a pretentious synonym for personal finance. Wikipedia's description is unintelligible to the layman, but it does suggest a pretentious version of the Suze Orman show. Most non-economists expect professional economists to be able to forecast GDP and inflation at a moment's notice, and to be sure guides for selecting a good mortgage. Expect irritation when the economist answers, “well, on the one hand….”
Is Economics, then, like Medicine? Then it is not properly a liberal art, even if some individual parts of it may be very interesting per se: we study it (and we hold it in high regard) because it is useful. We expect tangible output and evidence of results. We do not study topics with no clear application. We hold in contempt the mental gymnastics of the learned journals, and we put away the history of thought.
I’m not so sure. As Alfred Marshall said,
"Economics has as its purpose firstly to acquire knowledge for its own sake, and secondly to throw light on practical issues. But though we are bound, before entering on any study, to consider carefully what are its uses, we should not plan out our work with direct reference to them" (Principles of Economics, 1898).
Most economists study topics that are really, well, pretty darn useless, but so very interesting. So much in Economics is just fascinating, independent of use, and is studied for the sheer intellectual joy of producing beauty. Most of us just want to understand, to figure out how it works, to tease out an explanation or an abstract description.
Stay tuned: in future installments, I compare Econ to your favorite discipline and I argue that I deserve to keep my job.
1 Response to "The Idea of Economics in a University - Part 1"
Lee Trepanier on Feb 22, 2009
I would contend that almost any discipline can be taught liberally, including economics. The question is whether the professor’s and students’ orientation towards the student is primarily practical or theoretical (knowledge-for-its-own sake). If it is the latter, then it would seem to qualify as a topic taught liberally.
I wonder whether you confront a different problem from your students in that they see economics only as a vocational subject. That is, how do you make your students approach economics as a topic to study for its own sake? I look forward to your future posts.